Pebble Pilgrimage

On Saturday, January 31, 2009, I had the opportunity to play the famed Pebble Beach with my son Benjamin. The weather conditions were near perfect.
I enjoyed driving the coast and 17 mile drive with the top down.

A view of the fifth hole redesigned by Jack Nicklaus.
Benjamin putting on the sixth green.
Looking back at holes 17 and 18 from the 7th tee box.
Standing on the 7th green looking out at Monterey Bay.
Looking from the 8th tee across to holes 9 and 10.


My most memorable moment in the round was making a sand save for par on number 17. It was great fun playing with Benjamin and being able to spend some time with Karen, Caleb, and Joshua.

Golf

Okay, I am going to prepare you for golf, golf, and more golf coming soon. Ray golfed Pebble Beach Country Club today and it is only a matter of time before you are inundated with pictures and stories of his noble triumph (or something like that). Just a friendly warning!

Foxy!!

Nana nothing, look at that foxy man! Can you see why I fell madly in love with him??

Foxxy

Our engagement photo. Nana was one hot peach craft item.

The Christmas Clock

I decided to make Nana a clock to go in her piano studio for Christmas. The clock is set into the body of a twenty-inch tall treble clef that is mounted on a music staff to scale with a sharp and an eighth note. The clef, sharp, and eighth note are dadoed to receive the lines on the staff. The notation is done in walnut and the clock face is done in hard maple and walnut. The face is divided into 12 sectors with each sector representing a step and 1/2 step in an octave. The half steps are done in walnut and correspond to the "black" keys on the piano. The clock face was laminated and then turned on the lathe. The back of the face was tenoned with the lathe into a routed mortise on the treble clef face. The clock movement was mortised into the back of the clef. It was a fun project and will hopefully help Nana's students learn some music theory.

Christmas Ornaments and Snow"flakes"

This One's for Natalie...My Green Thinker

Cradle to grave...farm to fork are expressions used to describe a new wave of activity in the environmental sciences. The technical term is life cycle analysis. For any product or process, all of the inputs and outputs and their environmental impacts are considered in the analysis. This allows for someone to take a comprehensive look at how we impact planet earth. Have you ever thought about the ripple effect one item in one meal has on our environment. I took the opportunity to research what the impacts were for

a 3 oz. serving of beef sirloin steak. Three ounces is the USDA suggested serving size for an adult (so why do restaurants serve 8 or more ounces in a serving?). I have created an Environmental Facts label based on the Nutrition Facts label that is currently required to be on all food. The beef provides 7% of our daily requirement for energy but it takes 24 times as much energy to produce those 146 kcal in the beef...most of it from fossil fuel sources. It took 2,000 gallons of water to produce 3 ounces of meat and meat production does produce greenhouse gases that contribute to the warming of our planet. Production of meat can also acidify and add nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus (eutrophication) to lakes and streams polluting fresh water. These are just a few of the environmental impacts. All modern food production impacts our planet to different degrees. If consumers were given this information, would it change their eating habits? Let's do it and find out!